Deadly Seduction (2 page)

Part One

The Set Up

Chapter One

Cillian

“We’ve got a traitor in our midst.”

Cillian Cox smoked a cigarette and tried not to choke on the smoke as he exhaled through his nose and mouth. He glared in his father’s direction and tried not to feel anything. The son of Dizzy Cox didn’t have much to say about his father’s accusations because he knew no matter what happened, he would have a part to play in the future of dealing with said traitor. The very thought burned his throat as much as the acrid smoke from the Camel he dragged from repeatedly.

“What makes you say that?” Ronan inquired as he lit a cigarette and dragged deeply. “We’ve always been careful about who we let into the club.”

Desmond “Dizzy” Cox, President of the Lucifer’s Saints, an outlaw motorcycle club that had chapters worldwide though the charter club was in Birch Tree, Nevada, a quiet town with unusual borders. Although all the members lived in town, the actual club house itself straddled the line between Birch Tree and Pine Bluff, another small town ruled with an iron fist by the Demon’s Bastards, a rival MC, though not an enemy of LS per se.

The White Knights, a neo-Nazi MC, ruled Black Oak, a town that was south of both Birch Tree and Pine Bluff but all three towns were surrounded by the tri-cities area of Reno, Carson City and Lake Tahoe.

Pine Bluff was closest to Lake Tahoe while Birch Tree was just a short drive from Reno and Black Oak wasn’t too far from Carson City, the heart of the state and where the government officials were firmly planted.

All three MCs were under the watchful eye of the ATF, the DEA, the FBI and the U.S. Marshalls. They all knew it and due to the ever growing eye of the Federal government, security was extra tight at the compound that was getting a facelift as they held chapel.

All cell phones and other electronic devices were left outside of chapel and whatever was discussed stayed there. That’s the way it’d always been and it always would be.

Cillian, at the tender age of twenty-nine, was VP of the Saints. He’d earned his position the hard way—through perseverance and diligence. Though he was the oldest son of Dizzy’s, there were other older members his father’s age who would have been better suited for the job. However, it was a given that when the time came for the old man to step down, he would hand the gavel to his son.

Cillian had more pressing issues to worry about other than a traitor infiltrating the club. He had an old lady he wished he’d never hooked up with, two children and a shit load of issues that he’d never managed to solve.

His life was a fucking mess and everyone knew it.

He ran his hands through his brown hair and tried to concentrate on his father’s words but no matter what he did, more often than not, his thoughts would settle back to
her
and how he wouldn’t be a miserable fucking git if he’d tried harder.

Gisela Jackson.

First love, first person to tap that ass and the first man she hated with every part of her body and soul. Gisela would rather eat a plate of dog shit than be cordial to him. After all the crap he’d put her through during their teenage years, he honestly couldn’t blame her.

She knew about crime and the life. Hell, the woman was her father’s personal defense attorney though she ran a law firm with Kyra Hughes and they took clients from the clubs they represented.

The Saints used Jackson and Hughes for the very same reason why the Bastards and Raymond Jackson did: every MC and local gangster had to have a law firm and a bail bondsman on call twenty-four/seven. In their line of work, they didn’t exactly go looking for trouble but it always seemed to find them.

“So, you suspect Riley of being a traitor but you’re not one hundred percent sure?” Quinn wondered as he stubbed his joint out in an ashtray. “I don’t think that is fair to ask any of us to put our lives—or our freedom—on the line for something that might be true. How can you know he’s ATF? I fucking brought him in on the deal with
Aztecas Infierno
. If they find out—”

“—he’s dead already but then it is us that
AI
will start looking funny at and not for nothing but I don’t want our peaceful town turning into Juarez, know what I mean?” Cillian glared at his brother who said nothing else and wouldn’t look him in his crystal blue eyes.

“Cillian is right. It’s not about what we can prove but if he is an ATF agent then we can’t have him attending a meeting where we’ll be negotiating a deal for tons of kilos of uncut cocaine. There will also be talk of the semi-automatic and automatic weapons deal we have going down with the Russians.”

Dizzy swigged from his neat Bushmills Irish whiskey and set the crystal glass on the table. “I’m sorry, son, but I can’t risk the Club or our families over a man who cannot be trusted. I never liked him anyway—I don’t trust a man whose half-kraut. Those lying German bastards…where there’s smoke, there’s fire and my gut instinct is never wrong.”

“Let’s take a vote.” Cillian ran a hair through his silky hair and it still fell back into place.

“Agreed…but how do you feel?” Ronan stared at him carefully as the other club members at the table turned toward him at the same time.

His gut didn’t feel right and not for the first time, he agreed with his father. Unfortunately, his gut also told him he was about to do something really stupid. He might end up dead or in prison but what the hell, it was the life he’d
chosen
to live.

“I agree. Riley’s always rubbed me the wrong way though it has nothing to do with him being half-German. I do believe he’s played his game a little too pat and there’s nothing about his background that can be found out.”

He laid his tattooed arms on the table, held them, palms up. “I wouldn’t put it past him to be a Fed. Everything about him is too polished and clean. He doesn’t play dirty enough to convince me he’s dealt with a big time MC yet, and that doesn’t make much sense. His handler oughta have known better.”

“Shit. For some reason, I just knew this deal was gonna go sideways.” Quinn glared at them all, including his brothers, his father, Bookie, Cricket, Brendan, Sean and Kink. “However, we’re talking about murder of a
Federal
agent. Can’t I just cut him out or somethin’? Do we really want this coming back to the Club to haunt us? That’s why the Bastards always play it safe and are never on lockdown nearly as much as we are—”

“The DBs aren’t ever in trouble because they have that black bastard to protect them,” Brendan cut him off in a matter of fact tone.

He was one of the older ones, along with Sean. They were both Dizzy’s age, they’d all come over from Belfast, Northern Ireland, together. They wanted the American Dream, regardless of the cost. However, they also knew a thing or two about arms and organization since they’d all were former soldiers in the Irish Republican Army, a Catholic terrorist group more commonly known as the IRA.

Brendan was still in shape and had that rugged look of someone who lived in the country though he was still sharp as attack, non-PC and basically told it like it was. He didn’t speak much but when he did, everyone listened.

The Demon’s Bastards had a close relationship with Raymond Jackson and they trusted one another implicitly.

Neither Brendan nor Sean were gung ho about the deal they had with
Aztecas Infierno
, a drug cartel slash MC rolled into one. The Navarro family couldn’t be trusted; they weren’t Irish and it was only a matter of time before they would want a piece of Northern Nevadan territory to call their own.

However the three main towns had their MCs; Raymond Jackson and the mafia controlled Reno; Carson City and Lake Tahoe were no-go zones. One was the government capitol and the other brought in a lot of tourist revenue for the State.

The White Knights might have been crazy but there was no way they would give up Black Oak to a bunch of “wetbacks”. The Neo-Nazi motorcycle club controlled the meth trade from Southern California all the way to Washington state and Idaho. They might have spent too many years getting high off their own supply but they were far from being completely incompetent or stupid. There wasn’t a town in Northern Nevada that would be handed to
AI
without a bloodbath so huge, it would warrant national coverage and blow open the dark secret buried in the tri-cities area of what was considered a tranquil and ideal place to raise a family.

Cillian knew how much of a pickle his father was in, even if their aunt, Maureen, was still a Navarro and closely connected to the cartel due to her former marriage to Emilio, head of the whole operation. Her son—and their cousin—Carlito Cox-Navarro, was Sergeant-at-Arms for
Aztecas Infierno
. Although half-Irish, he’d completely been brought up and immersed in Mexican culture; he spoke Spanish fluently and had no love loss for his mother’s side of the family.

Their family was quite incestuous and involved in one way, or another, with both the Demon’s Bastards and Raymond Jackson as well. His little sister, Maeve—also known as Misty—was pregnant with Drake Jackson’s baby. Grace Cox, his father’s sister, and manager of super group and highly successful hard rock band, Scarlet Fever, had a daughter—their cousin, Moira—by Raymond’s younger brother, Kevin.

Dizzy banged the gavel down hard, and that brought everyone’s attention back to the issues at hand.

“’Tis true,” Sean replied with a thick, heavy Irish brogue. “But Raymond and the Demon’s Bastards aren’t the issue here. Jackson has never given us trouble and it’s not like we don’t all go to Reno and use his upscale whores so let’s cut the shite. This meeting isn’t about our ‘rivals,’ it’s about shutting down a threat. I don’t know about you but I’m not comfortable with having a Fed alive. He knows too much and even if we just cut him off, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have enough information to bury us.”

Ronan lit another cigarette and blew out a stream of blue smoke. “This is fuckin’ stupid. I’ll fuckin’ kill the motherfucker myself if Cillian is too chicken shit to do it—”

“—I never said I wouldn’t do it, and chill the fuck out. He will die by my hands but I want a vote.” He stubbed his cigarette out and breathed deeply into his hands as they covered his face.

Dizzy cleared his throat. “Let’s have the vote.”

“Yea.” Cillian didn’t bother to allow his father to look in his direction.

“Ronan?”

“Yea.”

“Yea,” Brendan said without a shred of regret in his voice.

“Yea.” Sean stuck a perfectly cut Havana cigar into his mouth and lit it with his Zippo lighter.

“Nay,” Quinn responded though he couldn’t look at anyone at the table. “I just think…we haven’t thought this through enough.”